This is where Josh Turiel deposits his blather about things he's not really qualified to speak of. Those topics typically include technology, politics, professional wrestling, economics, security, business, and parenting.
He owns a small business providing IT support, has a young son, is a card-carrying Bright, serves as an elected official (City Councillor in Salem, MA) and could stand to lose a few pounds. So that's where he's coming from.

Thursday, March 25, 2004

May I have your attention, please?

Mr. Insincerely M. Sapsuckers - I don't need to see hot babes doing anything online, I married one of my own.
To coolest coolest and kelvin johns - I'm not that interested in m0rtgage rates - in fact, I'm not sure what a m0rtgage is. If it's anything like a mortgage, though, I'm fine. Don't need a new one.
Weirdest P. Narcissistic - no, I don't need any steroids. Same goes for you, Squelching H. Centenarians.
And to Colette Sosa - I really don't need any prescription drugs cheap on the net - I have this thing called a "copay" that lets me buy them cheaply anyway. You should try one.

And to all of you who send me spam in Spanish, Portugese, and whatever Asian language I get (Korean, I think), I don't speak any of them. However, SpamAssassin 2.63 speaks them well enough to keep them all out of my Inbox. Including the above.

What's intersting about these spams isn't the products or services being spammed - it's that spammers know that filtering is common nowadays. So spams have become more and more bizarre and illegible to try and defeat the filters. As a result, though, the spam that makes it through isn't even really comprehensible to the average human, let alone the spam filter. And the human can easily recognize it as spam, making it a no-brainer to delete.

So though the volume of spam has exploded over the last year or so, the anti-spammers are clearly winning. When spam snuck in among your legit e-mails and was cleverly titled to get you to open it, that was one thing. But we don't see those anymore. Current spam is typically blatant - making it easily recognized and deleted.

Now we just need to send Vinnie the Legbreaker to the houses of a few big-time spammers, and the volume should finally start dropping off. Between Bayesian filtering and bodily harm, the incentives to spam should go away.